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Emergency department (ED) crowding stemming from treatment delays and deferrals resulting from COVID concerns is an emerging problem. This article discusses how ED crowding affects patients and clinical teams to reduce safety and effectiveness.

Health literacy efforts address challenges related to both language and effective communication tactics. This story discussed how lack of language and information clarity reduced patient education effectiveness during the pandemic and highlights several efforts to address them including information product translation services.

Delays and mistakes in health care for distinct patient populations hold improvement lessons for the broader system. This news story highlights problems in correctional system cancer diagnoses and treatment that may indicate other types of prison care delivery problems.

Socioeconomic conditions influence access to health care, and as a result, reduce its safety and reliability. This story describes how inequity can affect the care of disadvantaged patient populations and shares data on wait times for specialty care in Los Angeles County that contributed to costly diagnostic and treatment delays.

Patients with cancer and other chronic disorder treatment needs have been negatively affected by the restructuring of services to reduce the spread of the coronavirus. This story discusses company strategies to prepare to virtually support patients with a range of conditions. The author shares communication and support tactics to keep patients safe until they can get their appointments.

Delays in elective surgery and other procedures have the potential to lessen safe patient care. This news story describes the decision-making dilemma for physicians to limit patient access to care during the COVID-19 pandemic. Their concern is that the delays have the potential to result in diagnostic and treatment service deviations that could result in harm.

System weaknesses are often at the root of never events. This news story discusses the suicide of a concussed woman whose care failed due to gaps in team communication, discharge and transition practices.

Delays in emergency room (ER) triage and assessment contribute to wide range of failures that degrade patient safety. This news story highlights the findings of a government report highlighting overcrowding and production pressures as factors resulting in the death of a patient waiting for care who initially presented at the ER with symptoms of heart attack.

Incomplete or delayed test result communication is a known factor in diagnostic error. This article shares recommendations to enhance handoffs and information sharing amongst care teams and with patients.

Implicit biases can compromise decision making due to the effect they can have on heuristics, communication and patient/physician communication. This article shares reasons for these biases and shares tactics to minimize their impacts which include being mindful of biases and a personalized approach to patients.

Inconsistent patient name entry practices in electronic health records can contribute to wrong-patient errors. This magazine article reports on the complex nature of addressing patient-matching discrepancies as an economic, privacy, and technical problem. Improvement strategies include the development and adoption of a national identification program and biometric technology. A WebM&M commentary discussed problems associated with name similarities in the electronic patient record.

The operating room environment harbors particular patient safety hazards. Drawing from 1137 perioperative medication error reports submitted over a 1-year period, this analysis found that more than half of the recorded incidents reached the patient and the majority of those stemmed from communication breakdowns during transitions or handoffs. The authors provide recommendations to reduce risks of error, including using barcode medication administration, standardizing handoff procedures, and stocking prefilled syringes.

Nursing home patients are vulnerable to preventable harm due to poor safety culture, insufficient staffing levels, lack of regulation enforcement, and misaligned financial incentives. This news investigation reports on how poor practices resulted in resident harm in Pennsylvania nursing homes and discusses strategies for improvement, such as enhancing investigation processes.

This magazine article reports on the preventable death of a patient during an acute asthma attack. Written by the patient's husband, the article outlines the failures that led to her death despite the fact that she was at the door of a hospital emergency department and on the phone with an emergency dispatcher. Factors discussed include overreliance on poorly functioning technology, communication failures, and lack of fail-safes.

Structured handoffs can reduce communication problems that contribute to medical error. This magazine article reports on how I-PASS implementation can help enhance the quality and completeness of handoffs, highlights the need for pharmacists to be more engaged in handoff improvement, and offers insights for enhancing their role in the process. In a past PSNet interview, Dr. Amy Starmer discussed the implementation and findings of the landmark I-PASS study.

Medication errors continue to be a worldwide patient safety challenge that requires both systems and individual practice strategies for improvement. This magazine article describes how pharmacists can address failures associated with processing, dosing, care transitions, and information sharing to prevent medication errors.

Transitions are an error-prone process. This news article reports that organizational leadership should be engaged in enhancing safety of transitions and facilitating design of sustainable improvements. The article also highlights successful interventions that have benefited from leadership engagement, such as the I-PASS program.

Miscommunication during care transitions can contribute to medical errors. This article discusses how handoff communication tools can help to improve reliability of information transfer associated with anesthesia practice. The authors emphasize the importance of standardizing the process of perioperative data collection.